by Megan Hart
Alice had stopped drinking two hours ago, which was good, because the way Bill had been nuzzling at her neck and running his hands up and down her back, a better lubricated Alice would’ve been more likely to succumb to the temptation of wiping away the memories of Mick with another man. Instead, she’d bid Bill good-bye on her doorstep, though she had allowed him to kiss her—not chastely, sure, but not making out, either. Now in her comfy pajama bottoms with a carton of ice cream in one hand, a spoon in the other, she was scrolling through the choices in her Interflix account. So she’d be fat, single, and a little lonely for a while, she thought. There was a lot to be said about being unafraid to be alone.
Dinner with Bill had been fine. Pleasant. He was charming and funny. He tipped well, something that was always important. Were they hitting it off? She supposed so, though nothing about the evening had been particularly memorable. It was nice to go out, though. Have food, some conversation. No pressure, really. No spark, either.
At the knock on her front door, Alice put down the ice cream. Listening harder, certain she’d imagined it. Who the hell would be pounding on her front door at just past eleven on a Friday night?
A serial killer.
Alice, spoon in hand, went to the front door to peek out the curtains in the side panels, but all she could see was a shadow. Shit. Serial killers didn’t knock, did they? What if it was some Ted Bundy type of guy pretending he’d been in a wreck and needed to use her phone? Or that he’d lost his puppy, they did that sort of thing too, didn’t they, to fool people . . . ?
Her phone rang.
Alice screamed.
The phone, still tucked in her purse, which had been slung over the newel post, let out another few bleats and went silent as the call went to voice mail. It rang again a second or so later. Same ringtone, the standard one she’d assigned as default, which meant it wasn’t someone she talked to often.
Bill, she thought with a hand over her still pounding heart. It was probably Bill. She dug out the phone, but it was too late. She’d missed this one, too.
Before she could check the voice mail or even swipe to see if she recognized the number, the person on the front porch pounded the door again.
“Alice! I know you’re in there! Let me in!”
“Mick? What the hell?” In her hand, the phone rang again. She’d never put his picture in her contacts, but since he’d called her once before, his name and number did show up.
She should’ve blocked it.
“Answer your phone!” he shouted.
He was going to wake up all the neighbors. Alice swiped her screen, hissing, “Shhhhh!”
“Open your door.”
“No way. Are you drunk?”
“Why not? You have someone in there? Let me in!”
“Be quiet,” Alice said. “No, I don’t have someone in here with me. Not that it’s any of your business. Go away, it’s late.”
“I want to talk to you. Let me in, I want to see you.”
She tweaked aside the curtain and made a face at him through the glass. Mick glowered and gestured for her to open the door. She gave him the finger.
“Alice. Please.”
“Why should I let you in here? I told you I don’t want to see you.” She let the curtain fall shut, though through it she could still see his silhouette.
“I want to see you. Please. I have to. I have to talk to you. Are you sure you don’t have anyone in there? Like the guy you were with earlier?”
She paused at that. “What the? Stalker! Are you creeping on me?”
“Jay told me.”
“What were you doing talking to Jay?”
Silence. She could hear his breathing, but didn’t give in to the temptation to tweak aside the curtain again. She sat on the stairs, though, in full sight of the door in case he did something insane like try to break in.
“I wanted him to tell me how to get you to give me another chance.”
Alice narrowed her eyes. “What did he say?”
“Let me in, Alice. Please.” Mick’s voice softened. “Just listen to me. If you don’t like what I have to say, you never have to listen to me ever again. I’ll leave you alone, walk out the door. Never bother you. I promise.”
“Never talk to me again?”
Mick sighed. “Yeah.”
“Never . . . see me again? Not even at Bernie’s?”
“If I do, I’ll stay on my own side of the table and treat you like my dear, sainted aunt. I swear to you. I’ll never touch you again. Just . . . let me in. Please.” His voice hitched.
The thought of that, never seeing or talking to him again, or worse, seeing him but knowing he had no plans to touch her . . . Alice got to her feet. Phone still pressed to her ear, she opened the front door. Mick stepped through it, kicking it closed behind him. He took her phone out of her hand, ignoring her startled protest, and shoved it into his pocket.
He took her in his arms.
He kissed her, long and deep and slow and hard, until gasping, they broke apart.
“Alice,” Mick said, “there’s never been another woman like you in my life. I’ve wanted you since the first time you turned around and looked at me, and I’ve wanted you all this time, and I think I will want you for the rest of my life, if you’ll only give me the chance to prove it to you. Please, Alice. Let me prove it to you.”
BEFORE
Chapter 16
Alice Clark had no idea how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, but she did know she couldn’t squeeze even a single one into her weekend bag. She’d be lucky if the bag’s zipper didn’t bust open. A weekend at Crane Lake in the summer meant bikini, sunscreen, flip-flops, nightgown, and a couple of cute dresses. A book or four. Minimal toiletries. But at the last minute she’d shoved a pair of jeans and some socks along with an oversized sweatshirt into the bag, which was the tiniest bit too small to hold everything she wanted to bring. Last year she’d been caught chilly when a summer storm hit, and Alice believed in being prepared.
She didn’t know much about angels, but heaven must’ve been smiling on her because she managed to zip the bag and get it into the trunk of her car without incident. She even made it to work on time. The rest of the day, though, went quickly to crap.
“I’ll be there,” she promised Jay, phone cradled to her shoulder while she typed as fast as she could. “Have the wine ready.”
“As if I wouldn’t? Why didn’t you take today off?” Jay’s voice sounded muffled for a second. “You’re going to get there late, and you’ll have to take the crappy bedroom.”
Alice snorted soft laughter and rolled her eyes. “What, you won’t let me share with you this time?”
She’d been half joking, but Jay’s silence gave her pause. She stopped working and twirled in her chair. The last trip to Bernie’s, she and Jay had shared the loft room he always snagged because it had a small, private balcony where he could go to smoke. The double bed had been too small for two, especially if they weren’t lovers, which she and Jay of course had never been. She didn’t want to share a room with him, but the fact he wasn’t offering meant something important.
“Jay!”
“I . . . invited someone along.”
“Yeah, you told me you had a new friend. Mick, you said his name was.”
Another beat of silence. “No, another friend. He’s . . . special.”
Jay hadn’t had a boyfriend in about eight months. His last breakup had been bad, right around the same time as hers. They’d both vowed off men for a while.
“What’s his name?”
“Paul.”
“Not the guy from the club!”
“The guy from the club,” Jay admitted. “I know. It’s trashy. But . . .”
“It can’t be that trashy if you’re bringing him to Bernie’s for the weekend. Unless you’re trying to get rid of him, thinking we’ll scare him away.” She grinned.
Jay laughed. “You might anyway.”
“We’ll be extra super nice to him. You kno
w that.”
“Yeah. That’s what might scare him away.” Jay made another muffled noise. “Hey, gotta run. Bernie and Cookie just got back from the grocery store and I promised I’d help with the marinade. Or something, I thought it was marinade but who knows, I might’ve agreed to anything. Get here! I miss the hell out of you.”
“Me too. I’ll be there by dinner time.” She made kissy noises into the phone and hung up, then spun her chair another time or two, thinking of the weekend ahead.
Nothing but sunshine, booze, food, and relaxing. She was so ready for it. Work had been brutal over the past month or so, somehow made more indignantly awful because the weather had been so stinking hot. Not even the end of June yet, and already there’d been heat warnings all over the place. She couldn’t wait to get to the lake house.
She’d meant to leave work at noon and be on the road by one, get to Bernie’s place in Northern Virginia by three or four at the latest, but she ought to have known better. Getting out on a Friday was never easy, especially not when she was taking Monday off. Everyone in the world had the same idea about avoiding traffic of course, and she’d needed to stop for gas and an extra-large coffee to pep her up since she’d been up until past midnight packing and taking care of all the stuff she always managed to wait until the last minute to do. Now here she was on the road on a Friday afternoon and hitting all the traffic on 83 South toward Baltimore—and yep, there was an accident that closed the road, diverting traffic to the alternate route.
For six hours.
By the time she was able to finally get off the rural highway and back onto the state route, Alice had gone through every CD in her car a few times over. She’d stopped for gas and to use the bathroom as well as stock up on some road trip snacks, since at this point, making it to Bernie’s house by dinnertime was so not happening. Thank God for her sleeveless summer dress, because she’d had to drive with her windows down to keep her engine from overheating. By the time she finally pulled into Bernie’s driveway, Alice felt frazzled.
“I’m here!” she cried when she opened the door, flinging it wide and stumbling through it on legs numb from sitting so long, her bag heavy enough to keep her off balance. Graceless, awkward, uncoordinated, she didn’t care how she looked as she let go of the bag and tripped into Bernie’s living room. “Who’s bringing me a drink?”
Too late, she saw the video camera. Bernie waved at her, and she waved back, self-conscious but only a little. She was among friends, after all.
And some strangers, Alice realized as the man talking to Bernie turned and gave her a half smile. It couldn’t be Paul, she knew that at once. Jay had described his new flame as blond and blue-eyed, a Viking. This guy had thick black hair and eyes of piercing, vivid blue beneath dark, knitted brows. Mick, then—Jay’s other friend—unless Bernie had invited some other new stranger for the weekend.
“That’s Mick McManus,” Jay confirmed ten minutes later while Alice dumped her stuff in her room. “Irish as Guinness and Lord of the Dance.”
Alice unzipped her bag and shook the three dresses she’d packed to get the wrinkles out, then hung them in the closet, debating if she needed to change her clothes after the horrendous trip. “How’d you meet him?”
“We worked on a project together last year. He’s one of the few guys from Herston Tech I can handle for more than an hour at a time.”
“I thought you could handle most guys for more than an hour at a time,” Alice teased.
Jay made a face and lounged on the bed while she dug through her bag to lay out the rest of her stuff. “Anyway, we’ve managed a couple projects together since then, and sometimes we’ll have drinks after work, and then I just ended up inviting him here. You know Bernie and Cookie love to meet new people.”
“And he’s straight?”
“So straight,” Jay said.
Alice went into the Jack-and-Jill bathroom she was sharing with Cookie’s niece Tanya and ran some cool water on a washcloth she used on her face and the back of her neck. A quick swipe under her arms. After a second’s hesitation, she grabbed her makeup bag and swiped on some powder. A little gloss. From the bedroom, Jay made a woo-woo noise.
Alice poked her head out of the bathroom. “Shut up.”
“I thought you were swearing off guys.” Jay grinned.
“What? I’m just trying to look like I didn’t spend six hours on a three-hour car ride.” Alice shrugged and smoothed on a touch of mascara, eyeing her reflection. Her hair was a mess, but not in a bad way. And she didn’t look like she’d made a huge effort at primping. She came out of the bathroom. “Hey, do I smell bad?”
Jay chortled but took an obligatory sniff. “Like spring flowers and gas station chicken.”
“You can be such an ass.” She punched his shoulder, and he grabbed her wrist to tug her down next to him.
“Missed you.” He hugged her.
Alice squeezed him. “That’s the problem with being adults, right? Gotta work, pay bills, do responsible things.”
“Yeah.” Jay sighed against her neck and flopped back onto the bed, arms out, to stare at the ceiling. “Shit, Alice. What am I gonna do about Paul?”
She poked his side and got up to put her bag away in the closet. “Where is he, by the way?”
“Later than you, and he’s not stuck in traffic. Maybe he’s not coming. Maybe,” Jay said dourly, “he’s blowing me off. Again.”
That sounded bad. “Again? Don’t tell me you settle for that.”
Jay gave her a look. Alice sighed. Shook her head.
Jay sat up. “He’s worked his cock magic all over me, Alice.”
“Oh, lordy.” She raised both brows, but not in judgment. “That bad? Or good, whichever.”
“He’s . . .” Jay’s voice trailed away, not quite dreamy but definitely a little starry eyed. “Just . . . so . . .”
“I get it. I get it.” Alice held up her hands. “And you know I’ll be there with you every step, even if it means picking you up after you fall. That’s our deal.”
Jay looked solemn and held out his hand. “Pinkies.”
“Always.” Alice linked her pinky with his, both of them curling their fingers tight. “You know it.”
Chapter 17
Mick didn’t believe in regret, but he was sort of wishing he hadn’t let Jay talk him into coming along this weekend. It was always a little weird being a houseguest anyway, and being a guest in the house of someone he didn’t even know was just that much stranger. Not that Bernie or his wife, Cookie, had made Mick feel anything but welcomed or comfortable. He just wasn’t really used to being the odd guy out, the one without the inside jokes.
He was flat out grumpy, that was the problem. No good to anyone but the devil himself, his grandmother might’ve said with a shake of her finger, before sending him to his room to sulk it out. He sent himself outside to the deck instead, a bottle of beer that should’ve been good enough to change his mood in one hand. He’d finish it up, then make his early night excuses and hit the sack. Sleep would help the bad mood. It usually did.
And if it didn’t, he admitted, he was an asshole who didn’t deserve to be here. This place was amazing. When Jay had described his buddy Bernie’s place, Mick had imagined a rustic cabin in the woods. As it turned out, the house was amazing, a log structure, sure, but built into a hill with a finished walkout basement and a huge deck overlooking a vast, sweeping yard and garden. The kitchen, top-of-the-line gourmet. The guest rooms, even the tiny basement room Mick had been assigned, were well-appointed and totally set up to make everyone staying there feel like they were at a resort. Only a dick would stay in a bad mood, Mick told himself as he took a long swallow of beer and tried to force himself to stop being a dick.
Behind him, the French doors opened, letting out a waft of good cooking smells and laughter. He half turned, preparing to make small talk, but stopped when he saw who it was. Alice, whom he’d met only briefly forty minutes ago when she arrived. The redhead in the green d
ress.
The gorgeous redhead, Mick amended, watching her as she leaned on the railing to look out into the yard. She wore her hair, red, yes, but the darkest shade, cut just to her chin and swept to one side, tucked behind her ear to reveal a pointed chin. Heart-shaped face, Mick thought, knowing he was staring but unable to look away. She caught his gaze and gave him a smile.
“Hey. I’m Alice, and you’re—”
“Mick McManus.”
She lifted her glass of wine toward him. “Jay brought you.”
“Um . . . yeah. He mentioned you, said you were friends since college?”
Alice turned to rest her elbows on the railing, cocking one leg so the hem of her green dress hitched a little higher on her thigh. “Yep. And you guys work together sometimes.”
“Yeah.”
Mick drank some beer. Alice drank some wine. Neither of them said much of anything. Just drank and looked at each other until he wondered if maybe he had spilled sauce on his shirt during dinner or something.
“So,” she said, “are you always this much of a scintillating conversationalist, or is it just me?”
Incredibly, Mick laughed. Grumpy, out of place and out of sorts, lack-of-sleep mood and all, to anyone else his reaction would’ve been a scowl. But not to her.
“Sorry,” he said through a chortle. “I’m in a bad mood.”
Alice burst into laughter, too. “Are you?”
“Yeah.” He laughed a little harder, not sure what was so funny about it other than it felt so freaking good to laugh with her that he didn’t want to stop.
She was that kind of girl, he thought, watching her tip her head back in peals of bright and shining giggles that completely charmed him. The kind that made you never want to stop. At that thought, he took a couple of steps closer.
She noticed. Eyes gleaming. Her tongue dipped to touch the center of her bottom lip for a second or so, long enough to catch his attention but not keep it from going back to her eyes. Not blue, though he’d have thought so. Gray, pale gray with a dark ring around the iris. Maybe it was the light. It didn’t matter, really. He was caught in them.
